ABSTRACT
The writings of Thomas Nashe serve as one of the greatest examples in early modern English literature of what an intellectual history based on textual transmission can tell us and what it cannot. It appears that Nashe was among the first writers in England to make overt references to Sextus Empiricus and to quote large passages from the works of skeptical Continental writers such as Cornelius Agrippa and Francois Rabelais. A brief comment in the preface that Nashe wrote for the 1591 edition of Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella has long been recognized as important because it records the first known refe rence to an English translation of Sextus Empiricus. R.B. McKerrow notes in his commentary on Nashe’s reading habits that several of Nashe’s works, including Anatomy of Absurdity, Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil, Summers Last Will and Testament, Christs Teares over Jerusalem, and The Unfortunate Traveller, contain unacknowledged borrowings from Sextus Empiricus and Agrippa.1 Although McKerrow first identified these references in his edition of Nashe’s works, it took nearly a hundred years before William M. Hamlin posited that a short treatise titled The Sceptick, a loose English translation of a small part of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Skepticism attributed to Walter Ralegh, was the origin of Nashe’s allusions.2
